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Reflections on a Pilot Team Teaching Course and Applying the Flipped Classroom Approach in a Pharmacy Module

In this installment, colleagues from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) and the Department of Pharmacy share their experiences of applying different teaching approaches and activities to more effectively engage students in order to improve their learning.

The teaching team from LKYSPP, comprisingDr Caroline Brassard and Dr Namrata Chindarkar, compared the effectiveness of team-taught and co-taught modules in fulfilling the intended learning outcomes for the Master of Public Policy Programme. They defined co-teaching as an approach in which instructors share a module’s teaching load but do not actively engage in each other’s class or address the class together. Meanwhile, team teaching is defined as an approach in which there is active collaboration between module instructors at every stage of the curriculum’s development, from the module’s design stage to the delivery of the module content in lectures and tutorials. In their paper, Drs Brassard and Chindarkar provided the rationale for incorporating team teaching into the module, and the process involved in developing and incorporating team teaching into the Programme’s core modules. They also evaluated the extent to which the team teaching approach resulted in improved learning gains for students, and the learning points they derived from this experience.

Meanwhile, in an effort to develop independent learners amongst Year 2 pharmacy students taking their pharmaceutical formulation and technology module, Dr Loh Zhi Hui and Assoc Prof Chan Lai Wah carried out a pilot study to explore the feasibility of implementing the flipped classroom approach in their course. The authors hoped that this approach would enable their students to effectively apply their knowledge of drug product design in actual practice. In addition to sharing the process of developing the flipped classroom learning activities, which included developing short video lectures and the follow-up face-to-face sessions, the authors also carried out a post-session survey to evaluate students’ perceptions toward this approach. In their paper, they provide extensive reflection on the survey results and how it would inform the implementation of the flipped classroom approach for subsequent iterations of the module.

We hope the reflections and teaching experiences highlighted here provide rich food for thought as you develop your own teaching practice. In the coming year, we will be sharing more case studies and teaching reflections. We also welcome articles on developing one’s teaching practice, and the submission guidelines can be found here.

On behalf of the editorial team, we would like to wish all our readers a happy holiday and a wonderful new year!